British Keelboat League Northern Qualifier at the Royal Northern and Clyde Yacht Club

The British Keelboat League Northern qualifier bought a challenging forecast of light winds. Northern knowledge seemed to help as the results were dominated by local teams.

Saturday greeted the sailor with light and testing conditions. The race officer took advantage of the unexpected slight increase in pressure and managed to squeeze 3 races into a short window.

It seemed that maintaining speed and linking up the patchy breeze was the aim of the day for the 10 teams. The local team, skippered by Grigor Whyte, who led the way in the first two races of the day. After a race was abandoned due to the wind shutting off, the teams bobbed around and relaxed in the sun.

The wind was settled enough to squeeze one final race in before the race officer called it a day. Sailors from Oban Sailing Club found their feet and had a storming start in race 4. The wind was flicking around and the team, skippered by Steven Foreith, took advantage of a left-hand shift and sailed on port off the start line across the whole fleet. RNCYC hosted an amazing curry night on Saturday where sailors, jury and committee all mingled to chat about the league.

By mid-day when the water was still glassy flat, the sailors started to get peckish. What better lunch than fish and chips!? The change-over RIBSs headed into Helensburgh to pick up enough fish and chips to feed an army and everyone enjoyed the local food! Unfortunately, the breeze never filled in and the race officer reluctantly raised the flags to indicate that no further races would be sailed.

Oban Sailing Club and the Royal Northern and Clyde Yacht Club teams finished on equal points and equal number of firsts so the tie was broken looking at the races sailed against each other. Oban Sailing Club came out on top with the Royal Western team in third. Check out the full results here.